• West London Zone is evidence-led, collecting data and insights throughout each programme to help us evaluate our impact 
• Our 2022 results are positive, with an increase across almost all areas of measurement – social, emotional and academic
• This data also enables us to continue learning and improving our programme

Learning is fundamental to what we do at West London Zone. It is embedded in our programme, offering academic support and skill development to children and young people on our programme so that they can achieve their potential. And we know that learning does not end when you leave school.

Take my own career. Learning is important to me, which is why I started my career as a teacher in a West London secondary school. In my training I benefited hugely from coaching from mentors. They would observe my methods, suggest some new practices I could implement, and then the next day I could try it out in my lessons. Some things worked, some things didn’t – it was all part of my journey to becoming a better teacher. My mentors observed me regularly, helping me to identify my successes, and over time I got better.

The learning doesn’t stop at West London Zone 

We have a similar approach here at West London Zone, regularly learning about what works, what doesn’t, and refining our programme so that we can continue making a difference to the children and families we work with.

First, let’s look at what our programme does, and what we measure. We work as an early intervention charity that prevents young people from leaving school without the tools they need to succeed. The young people identified for our programme have an average of four different ‘risks’ – these are potential issues across their social and emotional wellbeing, academic results, attendance, socio-economic disadvantage, and in terms of family support. Our work aims to prevent risks from escalating into further, often statutory intervention. 

We work as an early intervention charity that prevents young people from leaving school without the tools they need to succeed.

In 2016, we launched our first full cohort of children on our two-year programme, and have been learning ever since they ‘graduated’ from West London Zone in 2018. Some of the big changes we’ve made as an organisation from the learnings from that cohort include:

We have introduced more short-term outcomes measures that we review on a half-termly basis - allowing us to intervene with young people before small problems become big problems

We have introduced quality frameworks for the support delivered by our delivery partners and our Link Workers – to ensure we deliver the very best support that we can

During the pandemic we pivoted our support to work online and more directly with families, as well as young people

We have introduced more intensive academic support for the children who are furthest behind on academic subjects, from small group tuition to 1:1

We made these changes because we believed they would help the children and young people we work with to achieve better social, emotional and academic outcomes than they would otherwise have done. However – unlike my experience as a trainee teacher – we don’t get immediate feedback on our methods: what to keep and what to drop.

Although we believe that rigorous data collection and analysis is important, we also believe it takes two full years before we can make a judgement on the impact it might have had. What’s more, results in 2020 and 2021 were deeply unusual due to the impact of COVID-19 – it’s just not possible to compare the progress of children during the pandemic to what came before.

2022 represents our strongest results to date

So results from this year are particularly important to us. The pandemic isn’t ‘over’, but children did have a largely uninterrupted year of school in 2021-22. The data we collected in Summer 2022 is our first real evidence of whether the changes we’ve made in the last four years are taking us in the right direction. 

The young people finishing the programme summer 2022 made more progress than any previous cohort of West London Zone children.

And we are delighted with the results. Those young people finishing the programme this summer made more progress than any previous cohort of West London Zone children.

• 75% of young people who started ’at risk’ on our validated measurement scales moved out of risk by programme end in Emotional Wellbeing (improved from 64% in 2020 and 2021)
• 66% of young people who started ’at risk’ on our validated measurement scales moved out of risk by programme end in Peer Relationship skills (improved from 63% in 2021)
• Of those who started the programme below age related expectations in English, 71% improved their grades, and 62% improved so much that they are on track to achieve age related expectations by the end of primary or secondary school
• Of those who started the programme below age related expectations in Maths, 65% improved their grades, and 53% improved so much that they are on track to achieve age related expectations by the end of primary or secondary school

Our only area of concern is in Confidence: we saw a drop in the proportion of young people who finished the programme no longer ‘at risk’ on our validated measurement scale in their Confidence (40% compared to 52% in 2021). We will continue to look at why this might be over the coming academic year, and as with all of our work will refine and improve what we do. 

These are great results – although we always apply scepticism to a single datapoint: we now have another year to see whether we have sustained this performance. And just like in my teacher training, the most useful thing is to work out ‘what worked’ – so that we can keep doing it and even do more of it.

Longer term outcomes – we will continue to learn

Finding out ‘what works’ demands a richer dataset than quantitative data alone can provide. This Autumn our Impact team is working directly with our Delivery team to understand in more detail the underlying drivers of some of these results. We’re also looking forward to the results of an ongoing Process evaluation conducted by UCL to give us more insight into children’s views on what they value from our work, and what we could improve.

Always offering the best possible support to young people

I chose to train as a teacher all those years ago as I believe all children have the ability to thrive, and because I wanted to help those who faced their unfair share of challenges. All of the team here at West London Zone shares this belief and is committed to improving opportunities for those in our Zone, where 1 in 5 children are in danger of leaving school without the support and tools they need to thrive into adulthood. This commitment is why four years ago we started some profound programme design work to make sure we deliver the very best support possible with West London Zone young people. 

I’m very conscious of the discipline this demands: holding ourselves and delivery partners to account for short-term outcomes; relentlessly documenting and monitoring our support for children; and raising the bar on the quality of our delivery. I’m grateful to every one of the Delivery and Impact team members who have made this happen, and I’m proud to be able to say that their actions have made a real difference to the young people that we work with.

Andrew Berwick

Strategy and Impact Director